His mournful lyrics have taken him to the top of the charts in 19 European countries and his latest album has been No 1 in France for weeks. He has been flatteringly profiled in magazines around the world, including an interview last week in the New York Times, which said that he "channelled, to popular acclaim, the grey that currently hangs over Europe". Meet the Morrissey of the eurozone.

Paul Van Haver, 28, a Flemish-Rwandan singer – also known as Stromae (slang for maestro) – is emerging as a chronicler of the existential crisis facing a generation of young Europeans.

The Brussels-based performer , with 388,000 followers on Twitter, rose to fame four years ago with the decidedly gloomy Alors on Danse (So We Dance), a favourite in clubs all over Europe for its mix of rap and heavy beat, alongside a rather dour view of life in the eurozone.

"You say studies/ I say job/ You say money/ I say spend/ You say credit/ I say debt/ You say love/ I say brats/ You say always/ I say divorce/ So we dance/ Then you think the crisis is over/ If it got worse we'd be dead/ But it's not finished so you shout even louder/ And so we dance."

In the last 12 months, Stromae has appeared on the covers of numerous magazines, from the French cultural bibles Télérama and Inrockuptibles to Elle. Stromae's physique is part of his appeal and a small army of image advisers is working hard on it. Tall, slim, with a cafe-au-lait skin colour and pale green eyes, he is the embodiment of multicultural Europe.

He also cultivates an androgynous look. In a music video filmed on Valentine's Day on a gondola in Venice, he wears makeup and a ballerina chignon, and sings, from a woman's point of view, a love song about an acrimonious break-up.

His mixed heritage (he was brought up Belgian by his mother while his father, from Rwanda, was mostly absent), provides the narrative of another of his hits, Papaoutai (Dad, Where Are You?). In the video of the song, he adopts the style and pose of a 1940s mannequin, representing the absent father (his father was killed in the Rwandan genocide of 1994), while a younger version of him mouths the words: "Tell me where he comes from so that I know where I am going/ Mum always says that if you look hard you'll find/ We'll all become fathers and soon disappear/ Everybody knows how to make babies but nobody knows how fathers are made."

If Stromae is very much of his generation, dispensing, for instance, advice on peace, violence, silence, among other themes, in "odd little lessons" (leçons insolites) as he calls them, which he then posts on YouTube and his website, he also belongs to a long tradition of francophone chanteurs who mix poetry and realism. Obvious references are the rappers MC Solaar and Booba, both brought up in France and of Senegalese and Chadian origins. In the early 1990s, MC Solaar proved a performer could rap in French, be invited to perform in the US and sell 15m albums.

An avid reader of the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Guillaume Apollinaire, MC Solaar soon became a star of belles lettres, reaping awards in France and abroad. More recently, Booba was also heralded as an impressive auteur. The serious literary publication La Nouvelle Revue Française even drew comparisons with the writers Louis-Ferdinand Céline and surrealist Antonin Artaud.

It only took a song called Formidable, in which Stromae rolls the "r", for him to be compared to fellow Belgian Jacques Brel. Less of a provocateur than Brel, Stromae has however courted controversy with a video in which a rather camp Jesus is seen listening to a congregation shouting: "God is too rich to listen to the poor. On behalf of the people, on behalf of rhythm, I shout House'leluya."

It is, however, perhaps on the subject of love, and the mess everyone makes of it, that Stromae has written his most accomplished songs. In Te Quiero, he sings: "One day, I saw her and I knew immediately/ That we would have to play those absurd games/ Jewels, kissing, etc, sweet words and backstabbing."

The refrain goes: "I love her to death, but in life/ We'll have to say we do, till death us do part/ Even if we change our mind/ Even if we know we're wrong/ We won't change life/ So like everybody else I'll suffer/ Until death."

Dissatisfaction, lucidity, realism, wordplay, Stromae's songs coupled with his image of a sleek dandy have triggered success and a cult following. Malaise in the eurozone may be grim for many but it has at least found a voice and a rhythm.